Los Angeles, CA (PRWEB) October 31, 2014
If not for its consequences, ADHD screening might seem funny, as theres hardly a child alive who would fail to register on an ADD or ADHD assessment scale.
After working with journalist Ray Richmond on the October 2014 Freedom Magazine feature 'The Attention-Deficit Fraud,' editor Jennifer Johnson was curious just how easy it is for a kid to get an ADD/ADHD diagnosis.
A mom herself, Johnson knows the parental M.O., the first place parents turn with concerns about their kids: the Internet. So she Googled "Does my kid have ADHD" and completed an assessment based on DSM-V criteria and other screening measures for ADD/ADHD.
I figured my 12-year-old daughter an excellent test subject, she writes as never has there been a child so NOT afflicted with ADD or ADHD. The kid can focus. She reads 900-page books over a long weekend, is teaching herself Japaneseyou get the idea.
Yet, based on her answers, Johnsons daughter registered in the high range of Moderate ADHD on the test scale, well above the threshold indicating her child should see a mental health professional for diagnosis and treatment of ADHD.
This exercise confirms the view of Dr. Allen Frances, professor emeritus of psychiatry at Duke University, who was interviewed for the Freedom story. Weve taken normal development and turned it into a mental disorder, Francis said. The drug companies are getting wealthy on the backs of millions of vulnerable kids who have no business being diagnosed with anything. Its pure greed. Theyre conducting an uncontrolled experiment without informed consent on a vast army of kids who have no clue what these powerful medicines are doing to their young brain.
The Freedom feature also includes the poignant, personal account of another parent who medicated his son to regulate the childs behavior, with frightening results, in I Wont Take Them.
It also reveals:
Long neglected by the media, the article states, many journalists today question whether attention deficit is anything more than a spurious label concocted by the psychiatric industry as an underhanded and imminently dangerous marketing tactic.
The rest is here: